One of Bitcoin’s earliest code reviewers has died

Dan Kaminsky, a renowned American cybersecurity researcher, has died at the age of 42, according to white-hat hacker and DEF CON organizer Marc Rogers.

I guess theres no hiding it now. We lost @dakami yesterday. One of the brightest lights in infosec and probably the kindest soul I knew. The vacuum he leaves behind is impossible to measure. Please keep speculation to yourself and be respectful of his family and friends.

— Marc Rogers (@marcwrogers) April 24, 2021

“I think this can’t be hidden now. Yesterday we lost Dan Kaminsky, one of the brightest lights in information security and probably the kindest soul I’ve known. The vacuum he leaves behind is impossible to measure. Please keep speculation to yourself and be respectful of his family and friends,” wrote Rogers.

In 2011 Kaminsky, already widely known for discovering a critical vulnerability in the DNS protocol, decided to hack Bitcoin.

“Code formatting was simply insane. Only the most paranoid and meticulous programmer on the planet could avoid errors,” he said at the time.

The expert developed nine approaches to attacks on the cryptocurrency protocol, but none of them worked.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. This is a world-class programmer with a deep knowledge of C++. He understands economics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networks. Either this is a whole team, or this guy is a genius,” Kaminsky concluded.

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